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Monday, 19 August 2013

The Passage About the Ten Lepers...

In yesterday’s Extraordinary
Form of Holy Mass we heard the Gospel of the Ten Lepers in which only one of
the ten who had been healed returned to thank the Lord. I was preparing to
preach simply on my usual themes of seeing sin as a sickness as well as an
offence, and of being thankful to God for all the good which He bestows upon us,
when I found myself noticing two additional things.

The first thing I noticed was that
it was not at the time of their encounter with the Lord that the lepers were
healed, but while they were on their way
to the priests. This called to mind the importance of the priestly role in
the healing of souls, yet today many people simply ignore Confession. Surely if
we are serious about our faith we will be at Confession at least once a month; priests
as well as people? We can’t be serious about our faith if we aren’t serious
about Confession, because without Confession we live in the stench of sin. Yes venial
sins can be forgiven by such as reciting the Our Father at Mass, but a certain
stench of sin can remain, residing in the attitude of “I don’t need Confession”
-and the soul who thinks in that manner needs
Confession more than they realise.

The second thing I noticed was
that while all were declared healed,
only one was declared saved. This
seems to underline the fact that while all of us have been redeemed, we are not
all necessarily saved (the difference between for all and for many).

We need to be like the
leper who gave thanks to the Lord; we need to thank God for His love, mercy and healing,
and we need to thank Him by more than simply coming to Mass, because if we come
to Mass without seeking to make our lives different to the man next door, then
we are coming as a kind of Fire Insurance: we are simply trying to stave off
the fires of hell. That really isn’t good enough. A life of prayer, reception
of the Sacraments, and of humble charity wherein we seek to avoid evil and do good,
is also needed.

Remember, no one wants us to
reach heaven more than Our Lord; He wants us in heaven so badly He died on the
Cross to open it up to us. Surely then, since He died for us, we ought to be able to live for Him. To return to my usual theme on this Gospel: if we see
can sin as a sickness as well as an offence, and come to the Confessional for healing
as well as absolution, and we can develop an understanding of the Sacrament as meeting
with the Divine Physician as well as the Just Judge, and be less afraid to approach...

"Slang" is a subjective and usually temporary state for a word. If the word is used often enough, it becomes mainstream and can be found in any dictionary. ( eg. skinhead, tizzy, or Sheila ( Australian slang for girl.) Slang or mainstream, grammar is needed when the word is written to ensure consistency.

Yes, slang words do get into dictionaries since language evolves, but I am not sure about the legitimacy of including slang terms (such as 'apps' instead of 'applications').language development seems more legitimate if growth of language is by the addition of new words for new developments, such as computer.

Sorry but it cannot be tied down to new developments alone. The nature of human beings means that they will constantly make up new words at any time about anything as they are prompted by an, invention, a hairstyle, a technological development, a system, an environment, an artefact.....anything really. Words drop out of usage too. Interesting but really not so important in the grand scheme of things. Much more interesting nowadays is "pope-watching" He is going about his business in a very efficient and underplayed style, coming out with many gems worth pondering too. Try going to Google and entering "google alerts" When it asks what you want to be alerted about, enter "Vatican". Every day you will get the latest news about what Pope Francis has been up to. Its a great read.

Yes, I think that's my point: we should "make up new words ...prompted by an, invention, a hairstyle, a technological development, a system, an environment, an artefact.....anything really." New words for new things is what I would advocate, as in 'computers'; I'm just not keen on slang becoming authorised.

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